Is it?

Here's what MLK has written:

> “Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree; but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic.”

> “A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.”

> “A section of the white population, perceiving Negro pressure for change, misconstrues it as a demand for privileges rather than as a desperate quest for existence. The ensuing white backlash intimidates government officials who are already too timorous.”

DEI initiatives, when executed correctly, show substantially and consistently superior outcomes for the people and organizations who implement them. You will see more, and more successful, DEI initiatives for the rest of your life, because they work. Companies who are successful will tend to be companies who execute DEI initiatives well (I can post many high quality sources if folks are interested).

It's completely fair to criticize bad implementations of DEI, and we all know there are a lot of those, but to throw the baby out with the bath water here would be a mistake, and not one corporations will make willingly. You'd have to be pretty militant and aggressive with the law in order to stop companies from pursuing a win/win like DEI.

Because you'd be wrong.

And you're right, claiming something does not make it so. What makes it so is all of the data supporting it, which is readily available to anyone who actually cares about this topic (up to you if that's you).

And I didn't say I knew anything about you? I said things that are true for any thinking, breathing human.

Honestly, what a weird reaction. You clearly feel attacked, which I guess makes sense if you genuinely are the worst possible parts of what I wrote about (choosing to be a racist asshole rather than a person of reason), but you're opting into those designations for some reason.

The things people will do to justify hatred are wild, thank you for reminding me of that.

I really cannot overemphasize how detrimental to your argument what you just wrote is to any thinking human being. Blindly claiming all research, from literally every institution in the world, is both inaccurate and rigged somehow on a widely studied topic, is an insane claim only made when you've given up on the entire concept of rationality.

You really would rather throw all of science under the bus before you let black people get an even footing in society, wouldn't you? Incredible.

If you want to police DEI initiatives to ensure they’re properly implemented, go for it, but the constant aversion to a so thoroughly researched concept is bordering on flat earther level conspiracy.

Any positive traits I would encounter from knowing a religious person would be in spite of their religion, not because of it. There are great, wonderful people who are religious, but not because of religion.

It's not an assumption.

> Along all dimensions measured, the more similar the investment partners, the lower their investments’ performance. For example, the success rate of acquisitions and IPOs was 11.5% lower, on average, for investments by partners with shared school backgrounds than for those by partners from different schools. The effect of shared ethnicity was even stronger, reducing an investment’s comparative success rate by 26.4% to 32.2%. [0]

> Increased diversity in the healthcare workforce helps reduce or eliminate racial health disparities, according to a 2014 meta-analysis of 25 studies. [1]

> A large-scale study of all Texas schools reveals diversity’s impact in public education systems. They find student performance most-improved when there was greater management diversity, and a closer racial match (representation) between management and student. [2]

> Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change. [3]

> Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse. [4]

> Using data from the 1996 to 1997 National Organizations Survey, a national sample of for-profit business organizations, this article tests eight hypotheses derived from the value-in-diversity thesis. The results support seven of these hypotheses: racial diversity is associated with increased sales revenue, more customers, greater market share, and greater relative profits. [5]

This is just the tip. Study after study shows diversity improves outcomes of group work, it's really hard to justify believing otherwise, in light of the overwhelming data.

[0] https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend

[1] https://www.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider68/default-do...

[2] https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article/15/4/615/991022

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/

[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...

[5] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000312240907400203

The argument goes like: There's some objective rubric, and hiring a black person despite that rubric's indication that they're 2.345312% repeating below the best candidate, is DEI gone wrong!

Anyone here who's ever hired for a technical role knows how wildly wrong that idea of recruitment is, but for engineers, we want to put a model to a system, and then we want to worship that model, so it's hard for some folks to grasp.

If you see a black person with an education from an institute like Harvard, you should think about the additional work they had to do to get there.

And by the way, those kids get the grades necessary to attend these schools. Why would you presume they don't?

Religion has irreparably harmed society, and only recently have we finally begun to eschew the completely unnecessary worship of sky beings in favor of experiencing reality for what it is. That doesn't mean we have to abandon spirituality, but it does mean we can be more sophisticated than to suggest people pick back up an ancient tool that has no use for us anymore.

No one should be forced to put themselves through the awfulness that is religion just to experience being a human with spirituality.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/beyond-red-v...

I think society is at a net positive for leaving "faith" behind, but spirituality can exist in the absence of any specific religion [0].

[0] https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/01/13/spirituality-kris...